The Blog of ANDREW sYRIOs

While I've been on an anti-communism kick, I came across some guy on Twitter noting how "capitalism allows 20 million to starve to death each year" because of insufficient food, water or medicine. Yes, capitalism "allows" this to happen.

Of course, people who just died of inadequate healthcare in communist countries are not considered to have been killed by communists, so this is an apples-to-oranges sort of affair. Furthermore, these deaths generally happen in kleptocracies, like those in much of Africa. These are hardly the liberal, capitalist democracies ardent capitalists like me espouse. And no, I'm not saying "real capitalism has never been tried." And nor am I saying that we can't do better than what we have now. But it's ridiculous to assume that some warlord ruling a poverty-stricken country by force can be counted as a "capitalist country."

In my response, I found four graphs that show in contrary to "allowing" these deaths, capitalism certainly appears to be alleviating them at a rapid clip.

Of course, correlation isn't causation... but damn! That's a lot of progress and I dare say it wasn't all just technology. Much of it was, but much it was also capital accumulation that has proliferated the most in capitalist countries. Furthermore, free economies and free societies are highly correlated.

That being said, there are a lot of worrying signs. From the decline of the family, to the erosion of civil liberties, declines in economic freedom, environmental issues, increased polarization, ethnic tension and a more and more Marxist(ish) intellectual class. We should not take these gains for granted.